Mr. Blair's Need for Viagra

Paul Weston’s meditation on the possibility of civil war in Europe should be looked upon through the lens of Britain’s pathetic stance regarding the kidnapping of its military in international waters.

You will notice that this is a very myopic lens. It leads those who view life through it to make short-sighted decisions, which in essence amount to no meaningful decisions at all. Ignoring the Geneva Conventions as though they didn’t exist — and one could make the case that those rules were beheaded a long time ago — Britain has gone hat in hand to our favorite eunuchs, the EU and the UN. The results of his plea for help range from zilch to insulting, thus proving Tony Blair’s increasing need for a dose of Viagra himself.

Notice that Mr. Blair did not ask the Americans for help. He dare not — remember our own response to the kidnapping of those in our consulate in Tehran under Jimmah’s reign?

And notice also the fact that the British consulate in Tehran in still open, though the siege there has begun its very early stages. It may be that Britain hasn’t closed the embassy because it dare not do so: it knows that its foreign officers would not be allowed out of the country. Well, not alive, anyway.

The time for diplomacy is past. In fact, diplomacy’s moment has utterly passed out of view and gone so far ’round the bend that even the far-sighted can’t see it anymore.
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Unfortunately, the right moment for a firm, manly and military stance has also passed. Some moments have to be seized, a fact that Tehran understands. However, Britain is stuck in a time warp from the end of the last century’s “soft” approach to rogue nations, the Clintonesque “why-can’t-we-all-be-friends” mentality.

And so the EUnuchs and the UN continue to undermine the strength and vitality of Europe. Those British sailors are hostages to fortune, and their leaders have failed them miserably. British citizens stuck in the consulate in Tehran (and equally vulnerable) cannot be sleeping well of late.

Has America been as emasculated as Britain? It is likely. With Mrs. Pelosi in charge of the House, we cannot rest easy, either. Nor do we dare judge the British for their impotent response to this artificially created crisis. We had our own such confrontation with Tehran within living memory and we failed — as with Britain, it was largely the fault of a feckless leader.

Our paralysis back then was due to the long shadow cast by Vietnam; and the manipulation of public feeling by the elites in the media and the academy “proved” our failure in that war. Britain’s powerlessness now is due to a similar darkness: the evil created by those elites who run the EU and the UN.

Is it too late to turn away from useless, unmanly, and immoral calls for “diplomacy” in the face of lawlessness? Or will our response to being grievously bullied continue to be a Gallic shrug, a turning our back on our people as we pull our pants down? Is this the new third way, to roll over and let the inevitable humiliation transpire?

God help us all.


In the interests of full disclosure, I admit my deep pessimism comes from personal experience, and I know the dangers of making the jump from the personal to the political. On the other hand, that very path is what turned so many former New York City liberals into law-and-order citizens.

Several days ago, my eldest son was viciously attacked by six or seven “youths” in a public place — the pedestrian mall of a “nice” university town. Their motive wasn’t robbery, it was humiliation. After they got him down, they proceeded to take turns kicking various parts of his body until other people passed by, causing the attackers to run away. The police station was several blocks away but after they were called it still took ten minutes for officers to arrive at the scene. And their response? A helpless shrug. “What can we do?”

My son is white. His attackers were black. The incident never made the news. What do you think the response would have been had it been reversed — i.e., six or seven white guys beating a lone black man, injuring him merely for the purpose of sadistic humiliation?

Can you say “outrage’? How about “racism” or “hate crime”? Can you believe media coverage and talking heads from the NAACP on the night’s news?

But the victim was white, so who cares? “Happens all the time,” say the police. “He didn’t bleed enough,” say the media.

The doctor says it could have been much, much worse. My son sounds relieved to have gotten off with such a light beating. After all, he has only a few fractured ribs, a bruised liver and some tearing of the muscle wall in his abdomen. There doesn’t appear to be any internal bleeding. In a few weeks he will have largely healed, especially if he doesn’t venture out in public again.

I am outraged. I cannot stop seeing in my mind’s eye the image of my first-born curled on the ground in a fetal position while strangers kick at his body, the same body I carried for nine months, the same body I cherished for all his growing years.

And now I can only imagine what the mothers of those British sailors are going through.

I repeat: God help us all.